Time to decide
by Mary Jane Elle Jay
Summary: The Doctor makes a difficult choice but learns more than he wants, "Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived"


**Reviews are loved! The quote in the story summary is from star trek, but I thought it fitted the story, and the Doctor well, as do all the quotes.**

**I don't own the Doctor, although I would love to**

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_"Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are."_ _Bernice Johnson Reagon._

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"You are the one who says it Doctor. Everyone has a choice and now it's time for you to decide. What is it going to be? Good or Bad? Light or Dark? Creator or Destroyer?"

She dangled the last word dangerously in front of him, before withdrawing to the other side of the room. She was goading him he knew it, but it wasn't fair why did he have to decide? Why here and now? He didn't have time for this; a girl was dying in his arms, debris spread everywhere about him, all of it his fault. He didn't have time to play games, especially not with a stupid woman who had a superiority complex. He tried to block her out and focus on what he needed to do to save the girls life. He looked into her eyes, and could see the confusion that lay there, but he knew without her saying a word that the confusion was not from what had happened, and how she had ended up like this but instead from the woman's question. He found that he couldn't focus his mind, not on anything, he couldn't save her, he couldn't clean up this mess and he couldn't decide. Not now, not here at least.

"Perhaps you see that the choice you give everyone is sometimes more hellish than not giving them a choice at all. I can see it and sense it in your mind. The panic is flying through at full force stopping your mind from functioning properly. You can't think, not with the pressure weighing down on you. Are you going to decide in time? Because the clock is ticking doctor, just as it ticks for all of those that you make decide." A wicked smile was playing on her face as she leant back against one of the remaining walls; there was a slight twitch in the corner of her mouth that made him wonder.

She knew how his mind processed decisions, she knew what he was going through, and she said that she could sense it in his mind. All of those things scared him more than any evil, more than losing everyone he has ever loved and he couldn't take it. He couldn't take the goading; he lashed out, shouting at her.

"Who are you? Tell me who you are, if you're playing it by my rules then that's what I would do next. What is your name?"

"Oh that is valiant, I didn't say I was playing by your rules, and you already know who I am." She knew what she was doing to him, she knew how this would just frustrate him more. He tried not to let it get to him, but he couldn't help it, everything she said and everything she did were working to confuse him, she was trying to get him to make the wrong decision.

"I don't..." he began, but she interrupted him.

"Oh no, I think you do. You know me better than you know Rose, better than you know time, better than you know yourself. You don't need to know my name, but I know yours, I know you're not John Smith, you're not even the Doctor." She paused for a second her look becoming more serious, and he dreaded what she would say next, " I know your true name."

"But you can't there's only one person who I can tell my true name and I know that you are not her. I haven't eve told her yet, she still hasn't met me. You can't be, you're not River." He proclaimed, trying to regain some of the ground he had lost to her.

"I never said that you told me your name, there is more than one way of knowing someone's name. Anyway the clock keeps ticking; you don't have long left, a few minutes at most to save the girl. Which is it to be?"

He started to begin, but stopped trying to focus his mind, make sense of the situation, and what he was going to say before it just erupted from him. "I think you know what my answer will be. If I know you better than I know myself then I believe that there is only one person you can be, and I could name you if I wished, but that would endanger both of us. But what I can't get my head round is how you can be here?"

"I can be here that is all that matters, but perhaps you aren't asking the right question Doctor, how can you be here? Why assume that I am the problem?"

"Because you are!" he couldn't stop himself this time he just exploded, "You just are the problem, I don't know the future, I couldn't stop myself from being here at this moment in time I didn't know what would happen, but you know the past, why did you come back here? You're putting the whole world at risk. Why did you come?"

"You had to decide. I had to decide. I am your future, I am not here to change your mind, but to give you the choice."

"Wait... you are my future. But you simply can't be, there are many futures. Time is in flux, if you are my future though then it can't be. Tell me what's going on, tell me what's happening."

"Time isn't in flux. Really you have no choice I already know what your answer will be, but you better hurry up, otherwise she may never know the answer to my question. Creator or Destroyer?" The look in her eyes had changed, almost as if she was in pain, like something was ripping her apart. The Doctor looked down at the girl in his arms, and could see her tears flowing. He wanted to comfort her, but he was beginning to realise that the decision was more important than saving her. If he didn't make the decision then there would be no reason for the girl to carry on, but if he did decide then he could save her. There was a risk though, making the decision, depending on what his answer was could break this girls heart. There was always a risk, but it was a risk he needed to take.

"I.." he began, steadying himself before he continued, "I am neither, and I am both. I don't come with the purpose of creating new worlds, galaxies, parallel universes, they just happen. I don't change history purposefully to create a different ending unlike some of my kind. And neither do I come to destroy races, planets, or lead people to their destruction, and there have been plenty of people that I do lead down that road, plenty that just follow me. It tears at my soul every time, that is why I give them a choice and that, I suppose, is why I am giving myself this choice. I don't mean to create and I don't mean to destroy, so I guess my answer to you is that I am neither. I come to help to save people and heal history where it begins to fall apart. I am not a Doctor, but like a doctor I face the same challenges. I help things to happen, I help the creation of new planets, just as a doctor helps new born babies into the world, and sometimes even though I try to stop it from happening things are destroyed, just like a doctor trying desperately to save a patient from death and failing. In that way perhaps I am both. But this is too hard! It's not a choice I want to make." And he stopped, he knew what the woman's reaction would be.

"And you think you're enemies want to make their choice?"

"No of course not. It's not a clear cut decision, I am a creator and I am a destroyer, but at the same time I am neither. That is the best my answer is going to be. If it's not good enough for you then I am sorry, and I am sorry to you as well" he said turning to the girl in his arms. There were still tears on her face, but he could see a smile from deep within her and it gave him the confidence to say the next sentence. "I can't decide."

"It's not good enough, it's not a choice and your time has run out. Let's say we were playing by your rules what would you do next Doctor?" Panic ran through him, if this was his future self then he knew what would happen, he just couldn't face it.

"No, please no, you can't, give me a chance! Give her a chance!" he pleaded.

"You had your chance doctor and that was it."

"It can't be. It just can't!" he yelled.

She was silent across the room from him, and he barely noticed the glisten in her eyes of tears welling up. In the silence there was a realisation, slowly and surely the Doctor's mind cleared, he understood what was going to happen.

"But, it is, isn't it. This is it, no act of vengeance, no destruction. Otherwise you wouldn't be here. You did know my decision didn't you. You knew I wouldn't decide, because you were in my place and given the same choice you couldn't decide either. Was it all just a test, why do this, why put me through this trauma, why make me choose if it didn't mean anything?"

"You know Doctor. You already know the answer, just like you knew what your decision would be before I had even given you the choice. One day you'll understand. One day you'll be on this side of the room. One day this will be tearing at your soul, just as it is mine now. But it is over now."

He understood, he understood the test that he had given himself, and then realised that it was a test for the both of them. He looked down at the body of the girl who had once been his companion and realised that, as she said, it was over now. The world needed him to move on, to be there, to be a creator and destroyer and most of all to be a doctor. The realisation flooded from his head though when he saw a glint of metal across the room. She had pulled the blade from somewhere that was concealed, and her last sentence took on a new meaning, and he wanted to run to her, to stop it before it was too late, but something stopped him.

"Never stop Doctor, never stop saving them, for one thing they brought you Jelly Babies, for another they will always surprise you. Never stop, never."

Suddenly the blade was gone, disappeared into her. And with that she was gone, faded into oblivion and the destruction that lay about him. And as the tears began to trickle down his cheeks he understood, it would be soon, sooner than he had dreamed, but he would never stop not until he was back in this moment, just on the other side, creating this last chance, knowing that it was over.

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_"I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,  
And I too suffer._

_ This has been my life; I found it worth living." Bertrand Russell  
_


End file.
